on broadway

Exclusive: See Wayne Brady Make His Drag Debut in Kinky Boots

“It’d be hard-pressed to find a performer, gay or straight, who hasn't lived Lola’s journey to a degree,” said Brady.

Courtesy of Joan Marcus.

Meet Cinnamon de Bergerac. That’s the drag name Wayne Brady has adopted for his new long-lashed alter ego, who may appear in performance at a club in West Hollywood very, very soon, though we can’t say for certain when or where. He’s been preparing for his starring role as Lola in Kinky Boots on Broadway later this month, but before he heads to New York, he’s going to take Cinnamon for a spin. It’s not about if he can pull it off. He will pull it off, he told me in October. The audience “will leave going, ‘Did you see boo boo dance? Twirl, bitch!’”

He just has 10 more pounds to lose (he’s already shed 10, shout out to Barry’s Bootcamp), a few more dance moves to conquer in heels, to increase his vocal stamina with Cyndi Lauper’s voice coach, and to strengthen those calves. Most foot-care advice came from Billy Porter, who won a Tony in 2013 for the role. “The sage Mr. Porter told me to ice my feet,” Brady said, and to “stretch out my calves and get a lot of arch support. I’m learning to walk in those shoes and just know that it’s never truly going to be comfortable.”

The physical transformation is crucial. There’s a moment in the show where Lola’s friend Don doesn’t recognize who she is. “So I want Lola to be believable as a woman,” Brady said, and because Lola was also a former boxer, “the physicality looks like someone who is very in shape, lithe, moves with a sensuality and grace of the performer that Lola is, but that sensuality and grace also comes from being a boxer and knowing your body really well.”

Once he’s taken a few more classes, including a “dancing in heels” class, he’ll be dropping into a club to make his drag debut. He’s thrown a wig on and done Beyoncé for his Vegas show, but “this is a different beast,” he said. “I’ll really be going in, and making something of it. After we did our photo shoot, I saw some of the proof pictures. And I’ve gotta say, while I won’t be winning any beauty contests, I definitely think that I’m a very attractive Lola—and you don’t see any of Wayne Brady there, you definitely see Lola.”

The thing is, Brady’s been dying to be Lola since he saw Chiwetel Ejiofor play her in the 2005 movie. And when the show was just a twinkle in a producer’s eyes, his agent called—they were interested. “I lost my mind. I was like, ‘Oh shit! It’s Kinky Boots, I’m gonna do it! I’m gonna get a Tony! Anybody that plays this role is going to get a Tony. Oh my God, this is it.” But the role went to Porter, leaving Brady heartbroken, though he admits he understood that “if you’re gonna go with somebody who can embody that character and kill it vocally and just be a beast, it’s Billy Porter. So I resigned myself to just being a fan.”

There’s something about Lola, he said, that echoes his own story. “It’d be hard-pressed to find a performer, gay or straight, who hasn’t lived Lola’s journey to a degree,” he said. “Not everyone is completely welcoming of your kid’s choice of saying, ‘Hey, I want to enter into a field where the competition is unlike anything else, where your job is completely subjective, where you’re always asking for permission to work, where you always need to be liked, and where you hear the word no on a daily basis. And! There’s no guarantee you can make a living at it.’ A lot of parents don’t jump for joy.”

When Brady graduated high school he turned down college, and a couple scholarships, to go into acting. His family resisted:

“They’re very responsible, and my dad, God rest his soul, was a lifetime Army guy—a drill sergeant—he definitely was not on board. Everyone else in my family had responsible jobs. That made me a little bit of an outcast for a while, until they saw that, with their permission or without, and with their help or not, I was going to do it, that it was really my life, and there was no plan B. When I look at Lola and she sings about, ‘You couldn’t see the best part of me, it was right in front of you, I’m not my father’s son,’ I look at her and go, ‘O.K., I get it.’

“So if I can help bring that message to anyone watching the show and continue the way the creative team has already done that—and Billy—then that’s a great team to be a part of. Because more kids need to hear that. They need to hear that it’s O.K. to be different; it’s O.K. to follow your dreams be damned whatever anyone else says; it’s O.K. to fly your flag high no matter what that flag is. And I’m completely on board with that.”